David Kirby: The Questions That Matter Most by Jane Smiley (review)
The point [Smiley] misses is that the best writing often contains an element of the weird, the bizarre, the outlandish, the alienating. Call it wildness, if you will…
Shaheen Dil: Properties of the Number Nineteen
There are nineteen angels guarding the gates of Muslim Hell—
which seems odd—who would be trying to break into Hell?
Or is it to keep the residents from getting out?
Baron Wormser: The Dark Sky | Politics and Its Discontents
It may be that the love that lives within us cannot be turned toward something as large and seemingly abstract as the earth. But the earth isn’t abstract at all. Each moment is local and real and is always a place where we might begin.
Barbara Hamby: Mambo Cadillac
I’m talking to you, Mr. Magoo. Sit up, check
out that blonde with the leopard print tattoo. O she’ll lick
the sugar right off your doughnut and bill you, too, speak
French while she do the do.
Michael Simms: Rhythm Benders | The Musicality of American Poetry
A poem is rooted in the rhythms of pulse, breath and movement.
Elizabeth Akers Allen: Rock Me to Sleep
Backward, turn backward, O time, in thy flight;
Make me a child again, just for to-night.
Chelsea Cleveland: Loneliness as Fermentation
Just as foods undergo significant changes, evolving into something more intricate and nuanced, we, too, experience compelling transformations in our lives.
Daniel Lawless: The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With
Was a cubit long and weighed half as much
As an average newborn U.S. baby.
Douglas Penick: “I am old”
As more and more of us live to advanced years, it is crucial to accept and even embrace our condition.
Ellen McGrath Smith: Woman Standing for an Hour in Target Reading Greeting Cards to Herself
Rejecting some
for sounding nothing
like her, others for
sounding too much
like the way she feels
Doug Anderson: Charon
The boat came by my bed, Charon poling through the murk. Get in, He said, and so we drifted through a night of broken trees and burning cars.
Elizabeth Romero: No Substitutes
A shy skinny kid at the counter
Ordered pea soup.
The waitress dumped it from a small can
Added water and heated it.
Ippen Shonin: Sorrow
those things we have longed for most
have not been attained
Elsa Gidlow: Despair
I can laugh now.
Have you not heard my laughter?
It leads the winds:
They come tumbling and bubbling after.
